Bush's G.O.P. Challengers Omit Education As a Key Issue In the Campaign

The two Republican candidates challenging President Bush this year
appear to be driven more by the desire to thrust certain issues into
the Presidential debate than by any realistic prospect of capturing the
G.o.P. nomination.

Neither Patrick J. Buchanan, a columnist and a former White House
aide, or David E. Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, has made
education one of those issues.

And when they do talk about education, both Mr. Buchanan and Mr.
Duke focus on support of parental choice, school prayer, and the
teaching of values--all positions Mr. Bush takes, too, albeit without
the same ultraconservative rhetoric.

Patrick 1. Buchanan

When Mr. Buchanan, who has built his "America First" campaign around
a near-isolationist view of trade and foreign policy, talks about
education, it is frequently to call for the teaching of "Western
values."

Mr. Buchanan maintains that the schools should help preserve the
United States "as an English-speaking, Western nation dedicated to
Judeo-Christian values," according to his campaign literature.

To do so, schools must vigorously teach U.S. and European history,
the English language, and American literature, he argues. In addition,
the candidate has promised to fight for a constitutional amendment
allowing voluntary prayer, Bible reading, and religious instruction in
public schools.

Mr. Buchanan has not yet developed any specific proposals to spur
education reform, according to an aide. But he is sharply critical of
the "education establishment."

"American education is in a state of decline, largely the result of
an ever-increasing bureaucracy, and a lack of competition within the
system," he says in a brief position paper. "From affirmative action in
hiring to busing for racial balance and assaults on uniform, standard
testing, too much ideologically motivated experimentation has been
inflicted on public schools."

Local education officials need to be able to hire and fire teachers,
and parents should insist on accountability from teachers,
administrators, and principals, the position paper contends.

Mr. Buchanan also believes that parents should have the flexibility
to send their children to any school they wish. Such a voucher program
"will create market pressures on education at the local level to
produce what students need most--real learning," his campaign document
predicts.

Under Mr. Buchanan's plan to reduce taxes and freeze or trim federal
domestic spending, the campaign aide said, specific education programs
would be evaluated to determine their worthiness of federal
support.

Mr. Buchanan, a 52-year-old former assistant to Presidents Nixon,
Ford, and Reagan, was writing a syndicated newspaper column and
appearing on several televised political talk shows before launching
his Presidential bid.

Most political observers say Mr. Buchanan's real goal is to gain
control of the Republican Party's agenda for the conservative wing of
the party.

David E. Duke

In his Presidential campaign, Mr. Duke is delivering much the same
racially charged message he did in his unsuccessful bid for the
Louisiana governorship last fall: that middle-class Americans are being
unfairly squeezed by minority preferences that cost them jobs and by
wasteful social programs that squander their tax dollars on undeserving
welfare recipients.

His expressed views on education have been limited to support of
parental choice, increased local control of schools, and a halt to
desegregation efforts.

The term "local control" provides the foundation for Mr. Duke's
views on education, according to his writings and a former
administrative assistant.

Glenn Montecino, who was an aide to Mr. Duke when he was a member of
the Louisiana House, said the candidate does not yet have a campaign
staff tracking issues such as education.

Mr. Duke has written that organizations such as the National
Education Association have "sought to wrest control of public schooling
in America from local, county, and state authorities to a more
centralized authority."

While he is a critic of attempts to create "multicultural"
curricula, Mr. Duke says he would not object to a predominantly black
community adopting an Afrocentric curriculum.

Similarly, however, "parents in rural Southern towns, or anywhere
else," should be able to decide if students can pray in public schools,
he asserts.

Parents should also be able to decide where to send their children
to school, Mr. Duke says. He favors a tax credit of up to $1,200 to all
parents to help them defer the costs of sending their child to a
private school or a public school outside of their district.

The candidate also believes that market competition would force
poorer schools to get better, while providing openings for new schools
to spring up in the gaps of school failures, Mr. Montecino said.

In concert with that proposal, Mr. Duke has called for the end of
busing to promote integration.

"Busing for the purpose of forcibly integrating the public-school
system may bring orgasmic delight to many an egalitarian social
engineer, but the practice of forced busing has proved, more than any
other single factor, to be the Waterloo of public education," he has
written. "With busing came an immediate and steady dwindling of
parental involvement and P.T.A.-type support."

Mr. Duke also favors tracking students according to ability.

Information for this story was gathered by Washington Editor Julie
A. Miller and Staff Writer Mark Pitsch.

Vol. 11, Issue 21, Page 27

Published in Print: February 12, 1992, as Bush's G.O.P. Challengers Omit Education As a Key Issue In the Campaign

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